Steve Mills and his wife have one daughter. They previously owned two coffee/ice cream shops, currently operate an internet sales company and teach classes, but his primary job involves the paper industry worldwide. Hobbies and interests lie in gardening, photography, recorded music and of course, their pets.

An ounce of prevention regarding an e-mail supposedly from Microsoft

I received an email this morning from Microsoft (supposedly) that has an attachment that will help me update security.

It is a well written letter, no obvious grammatical errors BUT I have never received an e-mail from Microsoft and my other computer that has different e-mails has not received this e-mail.

I would strongly advised that no one click on the attachment or follow the directions in the e-mail. If you want to check on an update, go to the Microsoft web site or call your local computer shop to see if they know anything about it.

It even says you may not see any changes, which makes me even more suspicious that they are planting something inside the computer and want you to return to your normal use. The return address says @microsoft.com but that does not mean much, if anything.

It says it was e-mailed to an undisclosed list but after reviewing the properties I determined it was sent to one of my addresses that Microsoft would not have.

End suggestion, DO NOT RESPOND OR TOUCH THE LINK! I could be wrong, but my being wrong will not hurt you. The other action could ruin your day or open you up to I.D. theft.

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Here is another internet safety tip from Kim Komando. Facebook has added another layer of security to keep your account from be hacked. I know we don't like to copy too much from other sites but rather than link you, I put the blurb here in quotations.

"The security measure turns on encrypted communication with Facebook. This makes your Facebook sessions almost impossible to snoop. However, it needs to be activated manually.

Log in to your Facebook profile. Go to Account>>Account Settings. Scroll down until you see Account Security and click the Show link.

There will be a Secure Browsing section. Click where is says "Browse Facebook on a secure connection." Then click Save and resume using Facebook."

-- Posted by stevemills on Sat, Feb 19, 2011, at 8:56 AM

I will modify my statement a bit. The e-mail I was sent the security notice is not one that anything is registered to with Microsoft.

None of my software is registered to this e-mail address, so there is no reason any of my software companies should contact me with it.